Xena

Xena was a dog who showed up at my office one January day in 1998. It had been storming. Her head popped up over some boxes, her ears perked. My boss took her home that night, fed her hot dogs (!) and brought her back the next day. She hung around our office, and we thought surely this smart dog's owners would be looking for her. We took her picture and made signs and put them up at the intersection. I talked my sister Carla into keeping the dog until we found her owners; I had an apartment and she had a fenced back yard.

Much to my surprise, no one ever claimed her. That was good, because after only a couple of days, Carla had fallen in love. She was named Xena because of her beauty and her fiercely protective nature. The vet estimated her age from 5 - 8 years old.

Xena loved to walk. My husband (then my boyfriend) and I would meet at Carla's after work and walk Xena to the park and back, about 2 miles. In 2000, we moved into a home two doors down from Carla. Then Carla and I walked Xena almost every day. She walked with a hop in her walk and her ears perked. Her ears had a bounce to them that I will always fondly remember. (See how she has them in the picture , right, with Max, her little brother.)

Xena loved to walk, and she was an amazing escape artist. She was able to escape from Carla's for a couple of years, all the while we tried to outsmart her with electric fence wire, reinforced fencing and the like. To no avail. The only thing that could contain her was a wooden privacy fence! She was very smart, following Carla's directions from just a look in her eye. When we walked Xena, children would stop us and say, I like your dog, I like your dog's ears, and pet her. She always behaved like a lady. Several people said she was a "cow dog, " whatever that is! We thought that she was a secret agent (remember, she was so smart) who had retired. Or an Iditarod dog (she had this singular purpose when walking, and she didn't stop to "smell the roses" a lot), who then came to Montgomery by hopping trains.

She wasn't my dog, but I loved her very much. Xena was in our lives for almost 11 years. We often joked, if she was 6 years when she came along, she would be 15 years old! (Insert different numbers)

She was an old lady. Our Xena Bean, our Beanlady. She was a good dog.

Xena left us today, November 25, 2008. I will miss that puppy dog.

Reading files from the SD card in Eclipse

An October firmware and software release made changes relating to the the SD card. Here are instructions from a LS user on how to translate notes in Eclipse software.

What I did was put the card from the writer in my computer, found the file I wanted in the folder with today's date, right clicked and Send To my Laura folder in Eclipse. Then in Eclipse I changed the writer type under the Input tab to Smartwriter and changed Read From to Drive or Folder and directed that to my Laura folder. After doing that, I could Alt I and read in the file.001 or whatever and translate it. So apparently we do still have a backup on the SD card, but you have to read the file on as Smartwriter notes instead of importing the RTF file, and that's the only backup.

Software/Firmware build

There is a new update available for the LightSpeed. You have to call in to Stenovations and have someone remote to your computer and do all the downloading. All you have to do is press the LS power button when they tell you to.

First they will save your config file, just in case. The new software doesn't overwrite the old configs, but it is a precaution. Then they uninstall the LS program. Then they install the new software. Then they put the firmware on your writer, and that's when you get to participate and turn the writer on and off.

I have briefly looked at the changes. Under the writer, you can choose LS. I think this is only for digitalCAT users now (we have a choice of the LS in our software). It worked just fine.
Also under writer settings, there is a check box, Noise suppression, and it is checked by default. This supresses the *dings* which happen when you are setting your sensetivities and touch the key. Must have been bothering folks. My sound is always muted, so I don't hear them.
Next choice under writer settings is Enable USB data compression. No idea what that is, and Avery didn't know either. I turned it on and didn't notice what difference, if any, it made.

Wait for initialization packet is the third check box, and it is check-able only with the Smartwriter chosen as your writer (in fact, it default checks it when you choose Smartwriter). Has something to do with Eclipse.

There is a choice under realtime backup that is called Create Raw Backup File. I suspect this is for the SD card. A raw steno track is where if you delete strokes with the asterisk, it will still show the deleted strokes in the raw steno. That way, if you overdelete you can still read the deleted steno.

More on the tables and the antistacking later. That's going to take more than a cursory look.

Wokiebear in love

Wokiebear (whose real name I don't know!) published this on depoman:

I just finished a two-day RT depo with my Etch-A-Sketch Pink (yes, I got the pink, but only because I wanted the pink to honor my Big Sis, who died of breast cancer...she was my mom, too, because we have a large family). I checked my untranslates. It was .9 percent. I am estatic. I'm off and running. I came home feeling like I hadn't even written all day. First day was 230 pgs, second was just 120 pgs. I had absolutely no pain at all in my hands. I actually felt refreshed. I couldn't believe it when I checked my untrans. I used the macros from the writer, too. Makes me feel joyful to write all over again. I even felt like it helped me be faster in writing. I did made one other tweak on the job to the vowel U as I felt I was missing it some where I didn't realize that before. And I've only been actively using the LS on the job for just a month.

What did I do? I didn't immediately start writing and practicing from a job. I came in every night and practiced on it with fingerdrills to make my mind acclimate to the different feel. Why my mind? Because my fingers already knew where to go...my mind didn't with the new didactics. So I trained my mind first w/out pushing it. THEN I practiced on a depo I already had. THEN after a week of intensive training, took it with me. I also feel I am indebted to the reporters who posted their config file because I used one of those and just had to only tweak it minutely. Why at night? I reserve daytime for work...nighttime is my me time for whatever and I could practice w/out interruption from anyone. I don't feel like I'm skating on ice anymore. It feels comfortable and at home. I did use a support for my wrists at first so I would not put them on the keys or "rest" them on the home keys until I felt at ease w/out the supports. I used a gel mouse pad I have -- had to use two, one for each side. Once I started taking my pearl out on the job, I never looked back and tried to go back and forth to my Mira so that my brain would gel into place.

I'm going to actually save money on this pearl because I won't have to have (yet) that expensive Support contract with Stenograph.

Oh, what a pearl....(pink pearl)!

Sharing user configurations

Can't set up your configuration files? Try some other users' configs. I have uploaded some user config.xml files at www.alcra.org/downloads/configs. All you have to do is save the file to your LightSpeed folder (instructions on the linked page) and load them in your LightSpeed GUI interface.